In Bhutan, a Bid to Turn Basketball From a Royal Sport to a National One

Students at the Pelkhil School in Thimphu, Bhutan. Few in this nation of 742,000 are taller than 6 feet.Credit
Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

THIMPHU, Bhutan — With just seconds left in the game, the queen of Bhutan went to the hole like a hungry snow leopard pouncing on a mountain goat, taking two dribbles and three long strides before putting up a royal layup.

Yes, your majesty!

Queen Jetsun Pema Wangchuck’s final basket was just one of 17 she made in a friendly game of basketball last month with nine other women. Basketball may be a street game in the United States, but it is the game of kings and queens in Bhutan.

Indeed, the 23-year-old queen, who plays almost every day, is surprisingly good. The royal set shot is as sweet as honeyed ghee, and the royal dribble as poised as a monk in meditation. Her statistics in that game were like those of an N.B.A. star: 34 points, 3 rebounds and 4 assists. (Perhaps it helped that the Bhutanese custom forbidding citizens from touching a royal without an invitation seems to extend to the basketball court.)

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Basketball being played at a youth center in Thimphu. As Bhutan puts together a national team, a lack of height and a lack of defense are obstacles facing its South Korean coach.Credit
Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

“If I had known you’d be counting, I would have played harder,” she said with a laugh. The queen’s husband, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, his brother and two half-brothers also play regularly. But after decades of being a largely royal preserve, basketball here is about to have its breakout moment.

A South Korean coach has been hired to cobble together a national team that many hope will someday be able to challenge its neighbors for bragging rights in South Asia and beyond. Bhutan has tried many times to win an international game but, except for a single victory in a three-on-three tournament, has never succeeded.

Bhutan’s main problem is height. Few in this nation of 742,000 are taller than 6 feet. The queen is 5-5, and her husband and brothers-in-law are not much taller. Dunking is almost as rare as dragons.

“And I don’t think our backboards are strong enough to take a lot of dunking,” said Paljor Dorji, an impish 70-year-old known as Benji, who learned basketball from Canadian Jesuits at a boarding school in Darjeeling, India. He is widely credited with bringing the sport to Bhutan and instilling a passion for it in the royal family.

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Paljor Dorji, who is credited with introducing basketball to Bhutan.Credit
Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

There is a saying in basketball that height cannot be taught, and Kiyong Kim, the new national team coach, says he does not intend to try.

“In order to cover the height problem, I’m trying to get them into a faster style of play,” Mr. Kim said through a giggling young interpreter. “We need stronger defense and better fast breaks.”

On a worn parquet floor in the tired gymnasium where Queen Wangchuck played, Mr. Kim began that process Sept. 2. About 50 young men showed up for the first of what Mr. Kim promised would be years of regular practices.

“The most important things are attendance, physical fitness, your ability to understand the game and, lastly, your enthusiasm as defenders,” he said in an opening speech that could have been taken straight from “Hoosiers,” a movie about an underdog basketball team in a tiny Indiana town.

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Bhutan’s queen, Jetsun Pema Wangchuck, who is a good player.Credit
Manish Swarup/Associated Press

And like the coach in “Hoosiers,” Mr. Kim promised that his players would rarely handle a ball in the first weeks of practice. For the next two hours, Mr. Kim put his recruits through a series of lunges, squats and pivots — the essential moves of a vigorous defense.

Bhutanese players say their best hope for a win could be against the Maldives, a country with half of Bhutan’s population that is threatened by global warming. As sea levels rise, Maldivians may have trouble finding places to play, players noted. And facing them in Thimphu’s thin air (the city’s altitude is 7,710 feet) could provide a crucial advantage.

“The thing I’ve noticed about Bhutanese basketball is that you guys don’t really care about defense,” Mr. Kim shouted while his players sweated and groaned in an extended squat. “That has to change. That will change.”

It is a problem that could have resulted from basketball’s royal birth. Bhutanese royalty — like some princes of American basketball — is known more for enthusiastic shooting than vigorous defense. Bhutan’s fourth king, 57-year-old Jigme Singye Wangchuck, now retired and widely referred to simply as K4, still plays daily (Mr. Dorji instilled a passion for the game in the king when he was a teenager) and is rumored to have made 65 3-pointers in a game (the N.B.A. record is 12). No one seems to know how many shots he missed in that mythic match, as security guards shoo away the curious when K4 plays.

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Hopefuls at a tryout for the national team early last month.Credit
Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

The present king, known as K5, can shoot jumpers with both hands, and the royal drive to the basket is said to be like a freight train’s. But defense? Not in his tool kit, several players said.

Perhaps because of the royal’s exalted status, in two observed games, no one seemed excited about putting a body on an opposing royal. And fouling one? The question led to stunned looks and nervous giggles.

“I fouled the queen once,” Yeshey Om, a 20-year-old college student in Thimphu, said as though remembering a car wreck. “I was a little scared, but she said, ‘It’s OK.’

“She wants us to check her, and she gets mad if we don’t. She thinks we’re scared of her,” Ms. Om said, and then added: “We are scared of her.”

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A photograph of Bhutan’s king, who plays, at the tryout.Credit
Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

Before the queen arrived to play, a royal retinue rolled out a red carpet between the gym’s entry and the basketball court. Beside the court, courtiers placed a chair covered in saffron silk and brought in an elaborately carved wooden table covered in more silk on which they placed chilled bottles of water. A clutch of women filtered in and whispered until the queen appeared carrying a Louis Vuitton purse and wearing a teal T-shirt, black tights and neon-pink Nike sneakers. She greeted the players cheerfully but quickly went out on the court, where the women split into well-remembered teams.

A man standing at attention at a small scorer’s table started a digital clock, and a klaxon sounded. Queen Wangchuck scored her team’s second basket on a well-practiced give-and-go. She then scored on two fast breaks, and on a 15-footer that led her to check a fingernail with some concern. Near the end of the first quarter, she drove to the basket through a suspiciously wide lane.

Her majesty’s team built a huge lead until the opposing players — performing a role akin to that of the Washington Generals, the famously inept nemeses of the Harlem Globetrotters — tightened their defense. To her credit, Queen Wangchuck rose to the challenge, hitting a jump shot just inside the 3-point line and driving hungrily to the basket with a defender in her face in the last seconds. The final score was 74-60.

In an interview after the game, Queen Wangchuck said that she has been playing basketball since she was 9 “and I haven’t stopped since.” (Marketing opportunity alert: she would “love to be invited” to the N.B.A. finals.)

“For me now, basketball is a great way of meeting girls and interacting with them in an informal way,” said the queen, a former commoner and a renowned beauty.

And then a courtier who had just tried to block her majesty’s shot (and had made three of her five 3-point shot attempts,) opened the door of the royal Toyota Prius and — the game decidedly over — bowed low as the queen hopped inside and was driven away.

A version of this article appears in print on October 15, 2013, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Sport Is Fit for a Queen, if Not Her Country. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe